Mac will graduate from The Evergreen State College
in June of 2000. He has published a number of poetry
chapbooks and is in the process of writing a novel. Currently
he writes a political column for the Evergreen’s
newspaper, The Cooper
Point Journal, builds furniture, and lives
on a small fruit orchard in Olympia, Washington.

There comes a time in political activism when one
must leave the confines of intellectual universities,
fast food counters, and factory assembly lines, and
move into the nation’s streets.

There comes a time when one must stop reading the
news, and begin creating the news. Over 60,000 people,
including: the AFL-CIO, Direct Action Network, Sierra
Club, Earth First!, Greenpeace, War Resisters League,
Global Exchange, Ruckus Society, International Workers
of the World, Rainforest Action Network, National
Lawyers Guild and the Raging Grannies gathered in
Seattle the last weeks of November through the first
weeks of December, 1999 to protest the World Trade
Organization’s 3rd Ministerial meeting.

The World Trade Organization is the actualization
of every political activists’ worst nightmare: an
unelected, closed-door organization with the power
to override national sovereignty in the name of profit. The
WTO was born in 1995 out of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to enforce what were
previously only international trade suggestions. Although
almost every single nation in the world belongs to
the WTO, all nations are subservient to its decisions. It
also acts as a judicial body of trade, with three
appointed “judges” who rule (in private) on international
trade cases brought before them. Since its inception,
the WTO has that ruled every single public health,
labor, and environmental law brought before them
are “illegal” trade barriers.

My involvement against the WTO began a year earlier
in a political economy class at The Evergreen State
College, when Seattle was chosen as the meeting site. An
immediate and spontaneous educational campaign began
through the internet, campus speakers, newspaper
articles, and informal teach-ins. It was an exercise
of popular education; students would gather together
over dinner, over beers, and while washing their
clothes to discuss what the World Trade Organization
was and what it meant. These discussions continued
with parents, friends and others both across the
country and around the world.

By August of 1999, my friends and I were regularly
attending weekly meetings with the Direct Action
Network (DAN) held in a downtown Olympia cafe. Within
the meetings we learned more of the WTO, as well
as how the movement against corporate domination
and the WTO was being organized. Having learned
from past political and social movements, we knew
that the government’s first response to any popular
social/political movement was to eliminate its leaders. Thus
was born a self-empowering movement without leaders,
or maybe more appropriate, a movement who embodied
the old Wobblies’ saying, “we are all leaders.”

In the months leading to the protests, the Direct
Action Network acted as the movement’s clearinghouse
of information. In preparation for the Seattle protests,
activists were taught how to form “affinity groups,” which
are small, independent groups of 5-20 people who
would act in solidarity with other affinity groups. Each
affinity group was trained in consensus-based decision
making. This form of decision making is unique in
the sense that it is non-hierarchical and there is
no “tyranny of the majority.” Each person’s voice
is heard, and no decision is made without the unanimous
consent of the entire group. In addition, each affinity
group had their own action planned for the Seattle
protest.

My particular affinity group included five women
and four men, ages 18 to 30. We spent the weeks
preceding the protests making paper mache cows (the
WTO ruled that the European Union must accept beef
with bovine growth hormone), sea turtles (the WTO
ruled that protective devices enforced by the United
States Endangered Species Act was “illegal”), trees
(the WTO’s Seattle meeting agenda wished to increase
the exportation and importation of raw logs) as well
as paper mache dollar bills covered with slogans
such as “In Greed We Lust,” and “The Corporate States
of America.” We also painted a large banner reading “Life
Over Profit,” adorned with stencils of a skyscraper
being chopped down and a tree growing from its “stump.”

Seattle

The week before the WTO was set to meet, the Direct
Action Network inhabited a large downtown Seattle
warehouse to hold its Convergence. The Convergence
was a week-long series of legal, first-aid, media,
non-violence, jail solidarity, street theater and
giant puppet-making workshops. The Convergence offered
the thousands of activists from around the planet
an opportunity to network and collaborate with one
another. I shared a cigarette with an activist from
India, and drank coffee with activists from the United
Kingdom. People from all walks of life filled the
warehouse, unionists were painting banners with Communists,
tree huggers practiced street theater with punk rockers. The
total energy of solidarity transformed the Convergence
week into a semi-religious experience of inspiration.

My affinity group split up at the Convergence into
pairs that attended different workshops, and would
then report back to our group. I went to the non-violence
training, which was an intense, three-and-a-half
hours of history, philosophy and role-playing. Our
teachers were two elders who began their resistance
in the anti-Vietnam war movement over thirty years
ago. We explored the de-humanization which is necessary
for violence to occur, and were taught how to counteract
this with body language, eye contact and civil, verbal
communication. One of the most valuable lessons
we learned was that two gallons of sugar water mixed
with a bottle of Johnson and Johnson’s No More Tears
cuts the effects of both tear gas and pepper spray.

Monday, November 29, 1999

The night before the mass action was to take place,
our affinity group attended the spokespeople meeting
held at DAN’s warehouse. A large map of the Washington
State Convention Center and the entrances leading
to it was hung on the wall. It was divided into
thirteen different “pie pieces,” each meeting at
the WTO’s Ministerial site. Each piece of “pie” had
ten to twenty affinity groups working in some way
together to shut down the WTO meeting.

Our affinity group joined up with slice “F,” which
was responsible for closing the 6th and University
Street entrance. Most of the activists in “F” were
from Northern California, veterans of the ongoing “Redwood
Wars.” With activist paranoia running high, a smaller
number of affinity group representatives in slice “F” left
the Convergence and held our own meeting in a laundry
down the road. Over the roar of the washers and
dryers, we first agreed (with consensus) to accept
the Direct Action Network’s four guidelines of non-violence
for our action.

After a grueling two hours, we hammered out a plan
of action that involved half of us physically locking
down to the road in order to block the entrance. The
other half would provide basic support for those
locked down (food, water, bathroom) and use our bodies
to protect them in case of police violence. My affinity
group would provide support for those locked down. We
agreed to meet the following morning at 7:00 a.m.
at the Benaroyal Station.

That night, I did not sleep. In the months preceding
the Seattle protests, the air was lit with rumors
and speculations. It seemed that everyone, myself
included, had a worst-case prediction for the November
30 action. Everything from nut-cases bombing the
delegates to the police shooting the protesters was
analyzed, discussed, and then discussed again.

Apparently, the police were feeling the same anticipation
as well. Seattle police officer Brett Smith was
told to “fully anticipate that five or six officers
would be lost during the protests, either seriously
injured or killed.” Activists were told to expect
as many or more protesters would face the same. While
I laid on the floor of a Fremont apartment listening
to the rain hammer the windows, the situation became
more real the closer six o’clock came. The possibility
that either myself, my girlfriend, my sister, or
someone else might be killed for exercising our Constitutional
rights put an empty hole of fear into my stomach. I
imagine it is similar to what my father felt every
single night he spent in the jungles of Vietnam.

Tuesday, November 30, 1999

By 8:00 a.m., my affinity group had marched up University
street with our paper mache procession and sat linked
arm-to-arm with leather-clad Wobblies and elderly
grandmothers. One grandmother brought a garbage
bag full of Depends diapers for the locked-down activists
we surrounded.

About a half-hour later, the multi-thousand person
procession from the Seattle Central Community College
reached slice “F.” An inflatable blue whale, roughly
the size of a school bus, named “Moby One” was put
down across 6th street. The procession left around
three hundred more souls who quickly formed a standing,
non-violent human chain across 6th street and University
street. The human chain blocked the WTO delegate’s
Hilton hotel entrance and the entrance ramp to I-5
as well as a main Convention Center entrance. At
every single other Convention Center entrance, delegates
were greeted by an impassable human chain. These
chains successfully and non-violently prevented the
WTO delegates from entering the World Trade Organization’s
meeting.

The relaxed ten or so police officers in regular
uniform who greeted the crowd an hour earlier at
the University street entrance with surprised looks
had long since been replaced by roughly 20 “riot” police.
Dressed in all-black hockey armor, large plastic
shields, black metal nightsticks, shotguns in black
gloved hands, black helmets with black gas masks
covering their faces, and long, black-cape rain ponchos,
they looked like machines. “We gave them ‘robo-cop’ material,” Mayor
Paul Schell said of the police.

Sometime near 9:00
a.m., a police car sped up from University street
(which was secured at the next intersection by
more protesters) and headed directly for the human
chain blocking the I-5 entrance. The entire line
immediately sat down as others leapt on the asphalt,
placing themselvesbetween
the police car and the human chain. Everyone else
in the chain began chanting “Non-vio-lence! Non-vio-lence!” as
a few of the police machines started swinging their
clubs while the cruiser drove foreword.

Within a lifetime minute the energy raised with
the high chant of non-violence had stopped the swinging
clubs, and the police car was quickly reversing out
of the area. Then sounded the most glorious, righteous
cry of victory I have ever heard. The protesters
had stopped the forces of violence with the power
of non-violence. For that moment, and truly forever,
the power of people acting in peace had won a holy
victory.

One half-hour later, 30 more police machines marched
in with an armored car and gave the crowd five minutes
to disperse. The entire human chain, from the Hilton,
across 6th and University streets sat down and liked
arms. Our banner, “Life Over Profit,” was placed
over the locked-down activists (whose number had
grown to 20), to protect them from the inevitable
assault.

Shouts began to ring that the police machines were
about to use tear gas. After that, a deafening silence
engulfed the air. “Put your heads down!” a woman
screamed, “and don’t look up, no matter what!” Someone
began beating a drum with a slow, deliberate beat. Another
woman seated across from me told us “somewhere far
below this asphalt and concrete is Mother Earth. Find
her, and root yourself.” An Asian man climbed atop
a dumpster in front of the police machines and proceeded
to play the tuba. No shit, he proceeded to play
the tuba.

The tear gas rang out with the deep, bass explosion
of the canisters leaving their guns. I felt and
heard the impact of at least two tear gas canisters
landing directly behind me, within the circle of
the lock-down. We remained in our non-violent positions,
sitting heads down, arm-in-arm. Suffocating coughs
pierced the cloudy air, screams of pain haunted the
silence. Even the tuba had stopped playing. One
elderly witness later described the scene as “a cross
between Star Wars and Tiennamen Square.”

Then came the sound of pounding boots, shouts of
rage from behind police machine gas masks. We could
hear the air-slicing flight of clubs prior to the
dead thump of impact, then the screams of anguish. Rubber
bullets firing off from fluorescent-orange-taped
shot guns, dropping fleeing protesters in bloody
heaps. Then the pepper spray. The line held the
first two times the police machines sprayed our faces
with the projectile burning, suffocating chemicals.

When the screams of the protesters reached a climax,
the line began to break up. The police machines
chased after those fleeing in a state of chemical
confusion, swinging their clubs and shooting their
rubber bullets. The third time the pepper spray
was shot into our faces, the line was almost completely
broken.

My eyes and face were on fire. Even through my
cloth bandanna, the only air I could take into my
lugs was clouds of tear gas and more pepper spray. Inside
my body, my lungs began to seize with burning pain. My
stomach began to contract uncontrollably, and I began
throwing up heavy globs of mucus. As I wobbled to
my knees, my girlfriend’s hand in my own, a group
of police machines raced toward us, clubs raised. A
volunteer medic, trained by DAN, grabbed us by our
necks, and dragged us down the road into a gated
parking garage entrance.

She placed herself between the rabid police machines
and us, yelling to the faceless, weaponed machines
that she was treating our wounds. The machines moved
on. That is the only instance that I know of during
the entire week when the police machines respected
a volunteer medic. Throughout the rest of the week,
police machines specifically targeted the volunteer
medics with beatings, rubber bullets, arrest and
pepper spray. After cleaning our eyes, and calming
us down, she moved off to treat more victims. Because
of that woman, I devoted my remaining days of the
Seattle protest serving as a volunteer medic.

The police machines made no arrests at that location
Tuesday morning. After our affinity group rejoined,
making sure everyone was physically safe, we went
back to the blockades. Only then, after the police
machines made the initial violent assault, did the
few, overpublicized “anarchists” begin their isolated
acts of deliberate vandalism. This is an important
fact to consider, since the City’s entire justification
for the initial assault was “to control the violent
protesters.”

It is important to consider because the American
government has a long history of sabotaging political
movements with “agent provocateurs.” This practice
was raised to a professional pursuit in the 60’s
with the FBI’s top secret COINTELPRO (counter intelligence
program). Later investigations of almost every single “riot” stemming
from a popular protest revealed evidence that government
(either police or federal) agents began the initial
violence. From the Black Panther’s actions and Dr.
King’s marches throughout the early 60’s to Kent
State in 1970 to the anti-nuclear movement in the
early 80’s, government agents consistently lit the
metaphorical fuse.

I believe that the property damage that occurred
in Seattle was initially and intentionally carried
out by a few governmental agents. It makes political
sense that when the police strike against the first
non-provoked assault, as they did Tuesday morning,
they need events that will hopefully overshadow and
justify their actions. From the first windows smashed,
the police and feds immediately brought up “violent
anarchists” when the excessive use of tear gas, concussion
grenades, rubber bullets and pepper spray was questioned.

Throughout the remainder of the day, tens of thousands
more protesters crowded the streets of Seattle. The
AFL-CIO labor march, beginning at noon, brought in
an additional 50,000 marchers. Police machines continued
to shoot tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and
concussion grenades at the non-violent protesters,
but they were totally and completely outnumbered.

Environmentalists joined the march with topless,
radical feminists, linked arm-in-arm with graying
steel workers. A large delegation of Chinese activists
marched with American students demanding a free Tibet. Longshoremen,
carpenters and bikers chanted along with organic
farmers, French farmers and young revolutionaries. A
true human tidal wave, crossing cultural, political,
sexual, economic, and geographical boundaries joined
in solidarity to overtake the streets of Seattle
that Tuesday afternoon.

In all terms, Seattle and the WTO had been shut
down. Every entrance to the Convention Center had
been successfully blocked, and held. A huge celebration
rang through the streets of downtown Seattle. Trumpets
and drums blared, while activist puppet shows, street
theater and spoken word entertained and educated
protesters and public alike on every corner. Even
the tuba had resurfaced. We had victoriously taken
over the city with non-violent direct action.

A 7:00 p.m. curfew and state of civil emergency
was ordered by Seattle Mayor Paul Schell Tuesday
afternoon. An unconstitutional No-Protest Zone was
declared, accessible only by WTO delegates and business
owners. Two hundred more police machines and 300
National Guardsmen were ordered into Seattle by Governor
Gary Locke. By an executive order, gas masks were
made illegal. To put that law into perspective,
imagine making seat belts illegal at the Indy 500. The
police machines were now officially under federal
control.

Around 5:30 p.m., the police machines began an all-out
offensive assault on the remaining protesters, pushing
them out of the No-Protest Zone an hour and a half
before it went into effect. The police machines
chased the protesters with concussion grenades, rubber
bullets and tear gas from downtown to the residential
Capitol Hill district. Quite possibly, this was
their biggest mistake.

The Capitol Hill neighborhood is Seattle’s primary
gay community, and one of the most liberal. When
the police machines crossed the I-5 bridge, out of
the “no protest zone,” and continued into Capitol
Hill, the residents rightly saw this as an invasion
of their homes. Ken Schulman, Commissioner of the
Seattle Commission on Sexual Minorities and Capitol
Hill resident reported “the only destruction I saw
(in Capitol Hill) was done by the police.”

What didn’t make the news was the homophobic violence
some of the police machines used on the residents
of Capitol Hill. Countless reports of police machines
beating gay residents while screaming “fucking faggots!” Many
of these victims had little to do with the WTO protests;
they were simply on their way to the grocery store,
eating dinner, or renting a movie. There was absolutely
no reason for the police machines to pursue the protesters
beyond the No-Protest Zone and into Seattle’s residential
communities.

Media Response

Tuesday’s protest was successful in the fact that
the WTO’s first gala day of meetings was totally
disrupted. From the cancellation of the Paramount
Theater’s opening ceremonies, to the official meeting
itself, the WTO delegates simply could not get to
their destinations. The protesters had truly “shut
down Seattle.” It was also a success in the sense
that it exposed America to both the existence of
the WTO and the extent of violence that our government
is willing use against its own citizens. Whether
or not national media covered the protesters’ reasons,
the WTO had become a household word.

Throughout many of
the remaining days of the WTO’s meeting, any national
discourse that occurred focused on the few “anarchist” acts
of property damage. These acts of property damage
were somehow crowned with the laden title of “violence.” In
the eyes of the corporate media, a Starbucks coffee
window getting smashed warranted more coverage
thanthe
Endangered Species Act getting smashed-more important
than American union jobs getting shipped off to
countries where unionization is a crime.

On Wednesday, December 1, over 500 peaceful protesters
were gassed, beaten and then arrested for failure
to disperse. In the jail solidarity trainings held
by the Direct Action Network, activists had learned
how to remind the police machines of the power of
the people. After going limp, the police machines
had to physically drag the protesters onto the Seattle
transit buses. Once on the buses, the protesters
cut their plastic tie handcuffs and begin rocking
the bus, thus incapacitating it from being driven. Once
at the jail, the protesters refused to give their
names and demanded equal charges for all those arrested. A
number of other techniques were used by the arrested
activists, and most were released from jail by Monday,
December 6.

In their orgy of excessive force on Tuesday, the
police machines had run out of tear gas and pepper
spray, which was supposed to abundantly last all
week long. Extra supplies of “non-lethal” crowd
control were rushed to Seattle from military bases
in Wyoming. These new weapons of crowd control were
no longer the traditional tear gas, but rather a “non-lethal” nerve
gas. The symptoms of this nerve gas include: nausea,
vomiting, diarrhea and the abrupt or immediate onset
of menstruation in women, muscular discoordination,
confusion, and in some cases hallucinations.

After the police machine riot on Capitol Hill and
countless Seattle residents being attacked and tear
gassed by their own police force, the city was enraged. Thousands
of residents were demanding the impeachment of Mayor
Paul Schell and the removal of the WTO from Seattle. Somehow,
a measure of sanity leaked into the commanders of
the police machines, and demanded restraint. This
(minimal) restraint was finally observed on Thursday
and Friday.

Aftermath

On Tuesday, December 7, Norm Stamper resigned as
Seattle’s Chief of Police. Although many Seattle
residents and some protesters were delighted, others
saw this as a play of politricks by both the city
and federal government. Attention would undoubtedly
focus on Stamper, rather than the mayor, governor
and various federal agencies who were issuing the
orders. Clearly, Stamper was marked as the “fall
guy.”

The Seattle American Civil Liberties Union is currently
in the process of investigating the legality of the
No-Protest Zone and police machine brutality. Mark
Offrey, of the ACLU said that Mayor Schell “didn’t
create a No-Protest Zone, but rather a militarized
zone.” The ACLU is still taking testimony of victims
and eye witnesses at www.alcu-wa.org.

Appropriately, Seattle holds the distinction as
the first global protest to utilize computer technology
to globally distribute information. Through the
Direct Action Network, the Independent Media Center
formed. An army of independent journalists, photographers,
videographers, artists and writers documented each
action, confrontation and demonstration throughout
the weeks in Seattle.

They were equipped with video cameras, cellular
phones, digital cameras, sound recording and walkie-talkies. Up-to-the-minute
footage and articles were put out to the world through
the Independent Media Center’s website (www.indymedia.org). Over
400 hours of video and sound footage was recorded
with numerous documentary film, legal and educational
projects currently in progress.

In every aspect, the Seattle protests were a stunning
and inspiring success. Not only did activists completely
disrupt the WTO’s 3rd Ministerial meeting (Seattle
Post-Inelligencer banner headline December 4, 1999
read “Summit Ends in Failure”), but they reminded
the world of the power of solidarity. The Seattle
protests showed the world that when 60,000 people
gather together for the same cause, there is nothing
that can stop them.

The Seattle protests rekindled America’s spirit
of revolution. It awoke a giant that had been put
to sleep with fast food, shopping malls, home entertainment
centers, and luxury cars. This giant is now awake,
and pissed. Seattle was a global demonstration not
only against the WTO but also against the accelerating
corporate pursuit of profit at the cost of labor
and human rights, the environment, and national sovereignty. Most
fundamentally, Seattle raised a serious question
for both America and the world. What does free trade
cost? Up until November 30, the question was never
nationally raised, besides the brief and largely
forgotten NAFTA debates in the early 90’s. Since
NAFTA, Americans have watched the economy grow, but
its stability plummet. The WTO meeting brought these
concerns to the nation’s dinner tables.

Seattle radicalized, educated and inspired the tens
of thousands who were there, and the millions who
were watching. A new generation of activists experienced
their rites of passage in Seattle. This new generation
of activists has no leaders, for truly, “we are all
leaders.” A localized, global network of resistance
took root in the 1999 Seattle protests and continues
to grow stronger in the face of each corporate merger,
environmental catastrophe and mass layoff. It is
a simple law of both physics and politics; for every
action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.